A blog devoted to the actors and public policy issues involved in the 1998 District of Columbia Court of Appeals decision in Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights, an employment discrimination case.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Significant Moments: On the Value of Candor and Honesty

"Wagner's here!" So saying, . . . Martin
Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
.
. . the interval passed, the gong sounded. The audience, which had
scattered in conversation, took their places again . . . Thomas
Mann, Mario and the Magician.
As far as the eye could see, the throng looked like waves breaking
at its outer edges. Ronald C. White, Jr., Lincoln's Greatest
Speech: The Second Inaugural quoting Noah Brooks of the
Sacramento Daily Union.
No composer, and few human beings,
have had Wagner's sense of mission. Harold C. Schonberg, The
Lives of the Great Composers.
He made no effort to disguise
his strategy: Elmer Bendiner, Time for Angels: The Tragicomic
History of the League of Nations.
"We show them our
hands," he explains. "We say, 'Listen, just so you know,
we're here to manipulate you and show you beautiful things.
Apparently, you want to do this. Now do you want to be massaged?'"
John Lahr, The Ringmaster: The Garish and Giddy World of Baz
Luhrmann.
After removing his hat, scarf, and mantle he came
forward to the front of the stage . . . Thomas Mann, Mario and
the Magician.
. . . and — bang! — John Lahr, The
Ringmaster: The Garish and Giddy World ofBaz Luhrmann.
... in
something of a high-wire act, . . . David Mermelstein,
Wagner's "Parsifal" — The Sorrow & the Pity.
.
. . showed himself a practiced speaker, never at a loss for
conversational turns of phrase. Thomas Mann, Mario and the
Magician.
"I have but a word to say to you, and I shall
sum it up with a bit of advice ..." Theodore Roosevelt,
Excerpt from Presidential Address Delivered to the Students of the
Central High School of Philadelphia.
"You show them you
have in you something that is really profitable, and then there will
be no limits to the recognition of your ability," he would say.
"Of course you must take care of the motives — right motives —
always." Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
Only
an experienced and self-assured gambler would have taken such a risk.
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews and Other Germans.
So far, the
man had done nothing; but what he had said was accepted as an
achievement, by means of that he had made an impression. Thomas
Mann, Mario and the Magician. _____________________________________

Soon after World War II Robert S. Strauss started his Dallas law firm and began the investments in oil, land,
communications, clothing and insurance that have made him wealthy. His
youth and Jewishness kept him out of local politics until his old friend
Connally, then Texas governor, provided him with two power bases: one
in 1963 as a member of the three-man state board responsible for
granting bank charters, the other in 1968 as a state Democratic
committeeman. Of his reputation for working equally well with the
ideologically good, bad and ugly, Strauss once observed: "If you're in
politics you're a whore anyhow. It doesn't make any difference who you
sleep with." He remains both a pragmatist and un-blushingly candid. "I
stopped lying 18 or 20 years ago," he says. "Not on moral grounds—it
just didn't work."

Describing Strauss's role at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, Jules Witcover set the following scene: "[Robert] Strauss, master of accommodation with all the subtlety of a
nuclear explosive, orchestrated a grand finale that would have been
comical had it not been for the good spirit of the moment. Suddenly he
had everyone up on the rostrum with the triumphant, grinning Carter: Mo
Udall and Scoop Jackson and George Wallace and Abe Beame and Hubert
Humphrey and Sarge Shriver and Brendan Byrne and Raul Castro and Moon
Landriue and even Strauss's wife, Helen. Like a drinker who has to have
one more, and another, and one more after that, Strauss summoned
literally dozens of the party's second- and third-string luminaries to
the platform."

Indeed, as far as the eye could see, the throng in Madison Square Garden looked like waves breaking
at its outer edges.